Faber-Castell Polychromos Artists' Color Pencils - Tin of 120 Colors - Premium Quality Artist Pencils

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Faber-Castell

Faber-Castell Polychromos Artists' Color Pencils - Tin of 120 Colors - Premium Quality Artist Pencils

Regular price: €263,00
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Regular price: ~~€434,00~~
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Description

120 COLORS IN METAL TIN - Includes all colors from the Polychromos Artist Pencil line. Polychromos Artists' Pencils are valued globally by professionals and semi-professionals for unsurpassed quality.
UNSURPASSED LIGHTFASTNESS - Each Polychromos pencils contains the highest quality pigments for permanent color and unsurpassed lightfastness (resistance to fading).
EASY TO BLEND - Buttery smooth color laydown, Polychromos Pencils feature oil based leads that can be easily blended for layered effects, highlights and transitions without the concern of waxy bloom that results with wax-based pencils
BREAK RESISTANT LEADS - Polychromos Pencils feature thick 3.8 mm leads that are break and water resistant. Leads are SV-bonded the entire length of the barrel resulting in easy sharpening and longer lasting art materials.
FABER-CASTELL QUALITY ART MATERIALS - See your artwork come to life with the absolute best quality art materials. Faber-Castell has produced premium quality artist materials since 1761.

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Customer Reviews

Great for adult coloring booksIf you are like me, you have no idea what tools you should buy for the adult coloring craze. So I asked an artist friend who directed me to these. I don't have a lot of experience with art supplies, but these seem to certainly do the trick. They are soft enough to color, but hard enough to keep a tip to do fine line work. Plus the leads don't break like other popular brands. My only recommendation: buy the biggest set you can afford. You'll end up wanting the extra colors. 5Polychromos pencilsI am in love with these pencils. they are the best pencils that I have used ever. They are more than worth the price. I prefer these pencils as they don't wear down quickly and the fact that you don't need to sharpen them too much, they hold their points longer. I had bought the Prisma colour verithins just to try those out, and I was disappointed as they break very easily even though those are to be of a harder lead, but these Faber castells are awesome. I had tried them out singularly, and then decided to buy the 120 set as I wanted to get all the colours. I do not regret my purchase.The colors are varied and very saturated. You don't need a lot to get full coverage, especially in colouring books, which is my main use for them. The leads are thick and are very easy to sharpen to a nice sharp point. They are creamy and smooth and so easy to blend with other colours. I had no problem blending the colours together to get a nice mix down. You get three trays of colours in the tin. All in all my best purchase ever. 5An Odyssey with PolychromosMy Rambling (but Hopefully Informative!) Review:Having been accustomed to primarily wax-based pencils (namely the Derwent Coloursofts and Soft-core Prismacolors gifted to me by family/friends over a decade ago), my early endeavors with Faber-Castell s Polychromos were not exactly love at first sight. However, as I was looking to delve a bit more seriously into colored pencil art and buy my own supplies, I was bothered by the flimsy feel of the new Prismacolors (apparently from cheapening/outsourcing their manufacturing process) even after carefully selecting open-stock pencils with the leads adequately centered and limiting vigorous applications/sharpening to avoid breaking inches of lead off them. Unfortunately, the only widely available pencil I could find emulating the cherished qualities of my old Berol Prismacolors (Caran D ache Luminance) were priced beyond my budget for any large set, so the Polychromos (which were broadly lauded on the Internets as a reliable, high quality professional artists pencil) ended up making the majority of my (then 25) colored-pencil collection.A lot of people compare these to the Prismacolor Premiers as competing alternatives, but working with the Polychromos almost felt like learning a different medium in the beginning. For one, laying and burnishing the paper with color is a much more gradual, time-consuming process (taking considerably more layers and strokes to get the same coverage as the softer pencils). At the same time, however, each stroke yields a great concentration of rich pigment, so carefully modulated pressure is important for getting the desired consistency and saturation (though the tooth of the paper will accept plenty more layers on top if initial touches were too light). The biggest difficulty I had with Polys was realizing that you can t really blend them in the same way you do with the wax-based pencils (i.e. using the pencil to push the waxy clumps of pigment from different colors into eachother). Instead, blending colors with Polys by themselves mostly entails iteratively/alternately layering the colors (from initially very soft to progressively harder applications) to combine them. Pressing too hard in attempt to force two dissimilar colors together can occasionally cause noticeable streaking of dark/deep pigments across transparent/light colors (this usually results from pieces of dark binder/pigment getting stuck to the lighter lead, and can easily be wiped or sharpened off).However, as my techniques improved (with the help of Youtube and a few other video tutorials!), I started really appreciating the detail, depth and subtle effects that these pencils added to my work. Furthermore, I found I could cover most of the Polys weaknesses by combining them with my residual collection of Coloursofts and Prismas (entirely intermixable, given their binders are all comprised of oil and wax - albeit with differing ratios). The Polys also lend themselves to relatively smooth blending with a myriad of solvents (turpenoid, odorless mineral spirits, rubbing alcohol, etc.), although I personally prefer to go with the non-toxic, non-fumey stuff (baby oil on a brush), and have heard rave reviews about a recently invented non-toxic powder blender by Brush & Pencil which specifically leverages the oil in colored pencils (for those who want the ultimate painterly look in their work).One thing that has remained constant throughout my experience with FC Polychromos has been their reliability and readily apparent construction quality. The thick barrels are comfortable to grip with a confidence-inspiring sturdiness, and anything I lay into the paper is consistently rich with pigment and vibrantly colorful. The pencils that arrived in my tin of 120 (when I finally took the plunge) were also in great shape and true to form. Literally the most nit-picky thing I could think of (besides very mild abrasion on the tin) was that a few of the pencils were a bit dulled from their sharpest point from contact with the tin (but were still, amusingly, probably still sharper as-is than most Prismacolors could stay!). My set also had no duplicates (which I feel I should take for granted, but apparently is a common issue with other said brand), and the colors of the barrels are actually representative of the color you can get out of them. As a little bonus, the case still has that nice California cedar smell two weeks after opening!The most common complaint I hear about the Polychromos is that they re very expensive , but I d argue that (when you account for the sheer amount of pigment/color you get from your lead, and the overall longevity of the pencil), they re actually a great value - arguably more color than you d get from the equivalent amount of Prismacolors. Of course, they re a non-trivial up-front investment, but (assuming you re also investing in large quantities of decently toothed paper), $2~3 per pencil a la carte isn t crazy (and you can do plenty with 20 colors). Should you wind up buying one of the larger sets on Amazon, they re currently averaging around $1.20~1.50 a pencil. The only area I found where you don t get so much bang-for-your buck is with the lighter colors (yellow, white, cream, etc.) which are a bit underwhelming on their own. At best, they can subtly tint darker undercolors (while the opaque shininess of wax-based pencil makes for far superior highlighting material).In sum, the Polychromos is a reliable workhorse of a pencil whose sturdy points also lends itself to more detailed, refined artwork (and thus, unsurprisingly, the choice of many professional artists doing portraits, natural scenes and hyperrealistic drawings). However, they also take a fair amount of patience and finally controlled applications to bring out their best qualities. These characteristics incidentally also makes them ideal for getting immersed in coloring books/projects (where I sometimes enjoy just practicing my shading, and taking my time to build up color depth). They re a great value staple for people who know they want some oil-based pencils in their collection and desire vibrant (but lightfast) pigments. If you re just starting out with the colored pencil medium, however, it is probably best to start with a few individual pencils from open-stock or a small pack (along with some softer wax-based pencil such as Derwent Coloursoft).PROS*Top-Notch Reliability and Construction Quality*Great for advanced artists who desire working in fine details/realism, or colorists who like to take time developing depth in their colors*Stands toe-to-toe with some of the more expensive oil-based pencils on the market (e.g. Caran D ache Pablos and Holbeins)*Comfortable grip and easy application*Great Longevity and Durability*Deep, Vibrant Pigments (especially in the darker colors) that match the barrel color*Excellent, Responsive Blending with almost all conventional solvents (baby oil, alcohol, mineral spirits, etc.) as well as some products designed expressly for colored pencil (especially Brush & Pencil s Powder Blender)*Decent erasability (by colored pencil standards)*Widely available in packs or individuallyCONS*Mid-High Sticker Price, requiring greater up-front investment than lower-tier brands*The light colors don t stand out nearly as much, even on darker toned paper*Not great as a standalone product for beginning artists looking to get quick decent-looking results in their early short projects*Don t blend easily on their own (requires lots of layering in overlapping circular strokes) 5Reasons for choosing the Faber Castell Polychromos Color Pencils/Color Wheel color choicesI bought the Faber Castell Polychromos Colored Pencil Set of 120 because (1) they match the colors and carry the names of traditional oil colors, making it easy for me to know which pencil I need to help create the series of preliminary drafts I go through before beginning a work on canvas, and (2) all my research on colored pencils suggested these oil-based colors were richer and smoother than anything else on the market. What further pleased me is that the colors on the outer casings of the pencils do indeed match the pigment cores of the pencils, making it so easy to recognize their colors by sight.Another advantage I found to these polychromos pencils is that, after many sharpenings, not one single point has broken inside the barrel of any sharpener I've used with them -- most likely because each core pigment is centered so precisely in the center of the casing. Still yet another important reason for buying the Faber Castell Polychromos set is that, unlike so many other sets, you can easily replace your most-often-used pencils from their Open Stock.In working with color theory, the first thing I do with any new set of any pigmented materials is to search out the twelve colors most closely matching the colors on the color wheel. These colors, if in pencil form, are then labeled at the top with a fully-encircling strip of artist tape on which I print in permanent ink, several times around the pencil for quick ID, the initials of the generic color on the color wheel. This minimizes any hesitancy in selection for me while working. Any other shades, tints, or tones of any other colored pencils needed are brought in afterward. The twelve pencils I chose from the set of 120 polychromos to replicate as closely as possible the color wheel are: Y: Light Cadmium Yellow (105) -- YG: Light Green (171) -- G: Leaf Green (112) -- BG: Cobalt Turquoise (155) -- B: Phthalo Blue (110) -- BV: Delft Blue (141) -- V: Purple Violet (136) -- RV: Middle Purple Pink (125) -- R: Deep Scarlet Red (219) -- RO: Light Cadmium Red (117) -- O: Orange Glaze (113) -- YO: Dark Chrome Yellow (109).These colored pencils are a delight to work with and worth every dollar invested in them. 5These are amazing. My favorite quality of these pencils besides how ...These are amazing. My favorite quality of these pencils besides how they lay down beautiful rich color is they are named actual pigment names. So if you have ever painted, you'll be familiar with these colors. If you want to use mixed media, you can choose cadium or ultramarine blue pencils and pair them with cadmium or ultramarine blue watercolors. Also when blending, you will already know which colors blend well to create other colors.I have a set of Prismacolor premium pencils that I love but I wanted to diversify my colors. After TONS of research I decided to save up for this 120 piece set. Like Prismacolor, they have deep saturating color. The difference is it takes much less pressure to achieve that saturation. They are soft and easy to color with but they are also harder...It's hard to explain. Less color comes off the pencil but it is just as deep as Prismacolor. They will last longer because of this. No more sore fingers! The leads spread color like butter but doesn't disintegrate doing it. They feel smooth and stable gliding across your paper not dry and scratchy or rubbery and sticky. They also keep a nice point. They do not cover up black outlines with a cloudy waxy build up. They can be sharpened with a regular pencil sharpener although they are slightly thicker than my other colored pencils from other brands. They have a more substantial feel in your hand. If I find myself using another brand for a while and coming back to these, I immediately can feel the more dense and solid feel of them. They also come in a beautiful tin box with nice, solid, stable dividing trays. I thought nothing could get better than prismacolor, but these Polychromos do. I'll be using both sets together. They do mix well but the palette are different so you add more to your pallet. 5Price adequate for the excellent qualityI know, they are expensive. But the quality of these pencils will never make you regret your purchase: they are soft, brilliant, intense, easy to blend. I use them on grayscale coloring and the result is extraordinary.Another feature I appreciate is that, if you make a mistake, you can easily cancel the line in a second with a soft eraser.The variety of colors is excellent, and the shades are rich and very easy to match.If you are not sure... Trust me: get these pencils, and you will never regret it. 5Worth the moneyI am like so many who have fallen prey to the addiction of coloring. I have spent money on a bunch of different utensils and coloring supplies. I did my research and finally took the plunge and purchased the Faber Castell polychromos. First let me say that the array of colors are a dream. I also have the 48 set of Prisma pencils. In comparison when blending and shading the polys take a bit of practice. The pencils have a more rigid tip and you can build by applying pressure or layers. The blending is beautiful and rich in colors but I will admit I love the buttery creaminess of the Prisma pencils. But... the issue with Prisma is that they tend to get a waxy finish when blending. You will not have this issue with the poly's. The Poly's are oil based and give a professional finish. The Poly's also sharpen much easier and the firm tips do not break as easily as the Prisma's so I feel they will last longer.Again, I am not an artist just a new very enthusiastic coloring addict! 5Lovely, simply lovely!Very impressive set of pencils! I got these about 2 months ago and have been using them on different projects, mostly coloring books. In the past I used a lot of different brands, Prisma Verithin Colored Pencils, Marco Raffine Colored Pencils, Ashleigh Nicole Arts Woodless Colored Pencils & Staedtler Ergosoft Colored Pencils, and the reason I mention all of these is because the quality of the Polychromos are superior over all of them. I do have to mention one thing though. I was thrilled to have 120 colors to choose from (but really, how many shades of grey do you need?) Plus they blend together beautifully to create even more custom colors. But the highlight of these pencils and the reason they are the best, in my opinion, is that they have the smoothest lay down of color....its like butter. Ive added some of the coloring projects I have done just to show how pretty the colors are. If you are considering buying a nice set of colored pencils, get these...I know almost $200.00 is a lot of money to spend on pencils, but you will love these! You cant go wrong with this purchase. 5Used set?I just opened this set and have to say unhappy doesn t begin to describe how I feel. These pencils are not a cheap set and the last thing I expected to see was the disparity in length and sharpening of the pencils. I am wondering if this was returned ? Really disappointed. It will be going back. 1Converting from Prismacolor- Here's WhyThis set is the best colored pencils ever produced. Let me explain the big reasons why, from where I'm coming from.I have been a hardcore Prismacolor fan from 2001 onward, and their quality has gone extremely downhill. Originally Prismas were made by Sanford which then became bought out by Rubbermaid-Newell. Their products are now consistently off-center (making sharpening hell- you repetitively lose segments of leads which can then only be used by fingertip and friction action), the leads are brittle, they only take 4-6 layers with extreme pressure which makes their colors harder if not nigh-impossible to blend smoothly (and the colorless blender is a joke- picks up colors, etc), and the wax bloom is *ridiculous*, which- if you're sharing your work online- makes decent scanning somewhat troublesome despite excellent DPI. (That's a whole other side topic.)I just got this set of Polychromos for Christmas as a gift, and I'm not looking back at Prisma.Polychromos (Let's call 'em FC for short after the company name) are awesome. There's a really insignificant amount of bloom, but it's an oil base so this really isn't an issue. The laydown is even more buttery than Prisma. They are softer due to the oil-base, and the colors are very rich.Quirks I discovered were the names. I'm coming from a Prisma background so to me, "Pompeian Red" is "Salmon", and "Mauve" is actually their very rich purple hue- which to my former mindset is usually that pale pink/lavender mixup color. So the names will take some getting used to since they're more in line with "painterly" names such as Pthalo Blue, Hooker's Green, etc. So that at least will benefit you if you come from a painting experience. (I do also so it's at least semifamiliar, but still something to get used to).It says something when I have six of the same colored pencil by Prisma and they're all in various states of use/disrepair/broken- and the money behind that does add up. It's frustrating to say the very least, and although that company accommodated my needs by fixing the issue every time (which was often!!) I had flawed items that were interfering with my professional work, honestly just go for the FCs- they're a lot higher quality, plus the leads are bonded and securely centered as well as 3.8mm thick- thicker than say, Crayola (*gag*) colored pencil, so you're getting more product for the money and less wood (which, let's face it: is just a disposable casing). Same amount as per Prismas, but with much less breakage/sharpening issues.To clarify: Someone called Geri B. in the Q&A says that FC don't glue their polychromos pencils. From their own website: " SV Bonding is a process of gluing the full length of the lead to the wood casing of the pencil. This strengthens the lead and prevents breakage which allows for better sharpening, and produces a fine point. SV Bonding is a Faber-Castell trademark. "They're 45c more expensive per pencil than Prismacolors (1.74 vs 1.29 as of this writing) on dickblick.com for replenishment. But considering on average I've lost at least 5 5mm-long leads per pencil (yep: terrible!), that translates to something like a half inch or more lost. One pencil is 7 inches brand new and sharpened, ie almost 178mm. After breakage, you're paying $1.29 for 153 mm (or less than 158 depending on number of breaks), and you're losing 18c per pencil. Some are outright unusable and splinter. Polychromos are the same length. .009c vs .003c; less than a penny either way, but those pennies do definitely add up- and the bottom line even after doing the numbers for the heck of it is- that you're losing product and money every time a Prismacolor pencil busts or fails to perform. I'm totally not a penny pincher. I'm providing this as a breakdown moneywise for the innately curious. And people should NOT have to pay for items to break repeatedly. Prisma tried to address this issue by making pastel-like colored pencil sticks with no lead, as long rectangles- this didn't fix the issue as they're too unwieldy for detailed use; that's a side rant.PROS:-FC are not too much more expensive per pencil than Prismas (buy 10 of each; spend only $4.50 more for world-class quality)-Outstanding laydown-Oil vs wax-based: better blending-VIVID colors, yet not overwhelmingly bad-Traditional style naming conventions as a throwback to the formal pigmentation for artistic references-More realistic results (google up some of the prisma vs polychromos showdowns on Youtube- the video with the grapes painting is what I'm referencing here in particular)CONS:-Haven't seen any yet, will update this review if I do 5

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Faber-Castell Polychromos Artists' Color Pencils - Tin of 120 Colors - Premium Quality Artist Pencils

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Faber-Castell Polychromos Artists' Color Pencils - Tin of 120 Colors - Premium Quality Artist Pencils

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Faber-Castell Polychromos Artists' Color Pencils - Tin of 120 Colors - Premium Quality Artist Pencils

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Faber-Castell Polychromos Artists' Color Pencils - Tin of 120 Colors - Premium Quality Artist Pencils

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